There’s nothing quite like a dark cold Halloween night, when pumpkins glow and ghosts and ghouls go trick or treating! But do you know where the word ghoul comes from? See if you can guess the correct one:

A. Is it a shorter version of the word ‘cagoule’, a waterproof jacket, because ghouls were believed to have greater evil powers when it rained?

B. Is it a blend of ‘ghost’ and ‘fool’, because ghouls were once associated with April Fool’s Day?

C. Does it come from a foreign word meaning ‘a demon that eats dead bodies’?

ANSWER: C!

The word ‘ghoul’ comes from an Arabic word for an evil spirit, which devoured the dead flesh of corpses buried in graveyards at night-time.

Centuries later, the word was also applied to graverobbers who would dig up buried corpses and sell them to doctors and surgeons for practising on!

Did you know …

… that there are hundreds of words in English for supernatural creatures. ‘Fairy’ comes from an old Latin term for the three ‘Fates’, powerful goddesses who were thought to control the destiny of every human being.

 

‘Goblin’ comes from a word given by German miners in medieval times to the mischievous spirits that haunted the silver mines.

A ‘werewolf’ comes from the earliest days of English — its literal meaning is ‘man-wolf’.

And zombies weren’t always frightening: the word comes from a West African word that means ‘good-luck charm’!